1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of faricating a shaped article having a removable section and, in particular, to a method of fabricating a sectional automotive window.
2. Discussion of the Technical Background
In general, sectional windows can be made using annealed glass by shaping, e.g. cutting or grinding, pieces of annealed glass to fit together to form the sectional window. The preceeding technique, however, is not acceptable where the windows are bent and/or tempered. By way of example, windows for vehicles are usually shaped monolithic glass pieces secured to the structural frame of the vehicle e.g. an automobile, or the monolithic glass pieces are mounted for movement, e.g., sidelites mounted for movement into and out of door cavities. The present technology is acceptable for manufacturing windows for today's automotive designs; however, such technology has limitation when used to fabricate future automotive window designs. More particularly, automotive sidelite designs are expected to include one shaped glass segment movable into an opening formed in another shaped glass segment.
The present technique for fabricating sectional sidelites includes cutting two glass segments to size, shaping the segments, and thereafter tempering the segments. The drawback of this technique is that each of the shaped segments will have reflective distortion resulting from the shaping. Furthermore, it is expected that there will be a curvature mismatch between the two shaped segments when the segments are moved together and reflective distortion at the edges of the segments. The reflective distortion is a result of anticlastical bending of the edges during shaping of the segments. The mismatch in curvature of the segments results from changes in the shape of the segments during tempering.
It would be advantageous to provide a technique for fabricating a sectional shaped glass article that does not have the drawback of the present available techniques.